Hello! I'm Laura. Occasionally I have thoughts, and this blog is where I keep track of (some of) them. Usually in short and unpolished posts. Maybe one d...
I am exuding big atheist energy for this one, so you might want to close this page if you're not into that. A few months ago, I finished reading Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. Very few other works have resonated so much with me, 1 so I wanted to take some extra time to reflect. One of my main takeaways was: there is no god. 2 Did you know that in the 1600s, the church was OK with the heliocentric…
There's this trope that customer support folks aren't treated like real people. I'm very familiar with this, as someone who's worked in a few support roles. For context, I mostly work with customers through email and text-based chat. One day, I get hit with: out of curiosity? are you a bot? or a human? Oh no. Do I sound like AI? A second person confirms my fears: I doubt that Laura and that…
How is it possible to have (presumably) real ingredients and completely eliminate their depth? Presumably they use garlic powder and oregano. PRESUMABLY the sauce was from a real tomato grown in real dirt. And yet, their pizza is bland as fuck. Sure, the basic sensations are there — salt, fat, and acid — but nothing more. For example, you buy cheese from the store and it's not just salty and fatty…
There was a scientific paper from a few years ago that calculated the true cost of a Costco hot dog. Costco sells their hot dog for $1.50 here in the United States (includes a fountain drink), but apparently the actual cost is much higher when you factor in long-term health issues. The study estimates that, for each Costco hot dog consumed in the US, healthcare costs increased by $21.38 per person…
Where I'm from, I'm used to these kinds of doors: Here are the magnificent doors I saw in Turin, Italy: Notice the smaller door cutout inside the big door. Also has a smaller door. It looks like the only doorknob is for the smaller one. Located outside the Teatro Carignano . Windows! It seems like a lot of doors were designed for their specific doorway. For this one, you can see that the…